Author: Lance Garrison

“What should I do with those copies of Apple Daily?”Someone in Hong Kong who I was chatting with on the phone recently had suddenly dropped her voice to ask that question, referring to the pro-democracy newspaper that the government forced to shut down in 2021.“Should I toss them or send them to you?”My conversations with Hong Kong friends are peppered with such whispers these days. Last week, the city enacted a draconian security law — its second serious legislative assault on Hong Kong’s freedoms since 2020. Known as Article 23, the new law criminalizes such vague behavior as the possession…

Are you better off than you would have been 14 years ago? If you’re one of the millions of Americans who have a preexisting medical condition and don’t have a job that comes with health benefits, the answer is, overwhelmingly, yes.Why? Because before the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare — signed into law on March 23, 2010, although many of its provisions didn’t kick in until 2014 — you probably wouldn’t have been able to get health insurance. Today you can, thanks to provisions in the law that prevent insurers from discriminating based on medical history and that subsidize insurance…

Kate, Princess of Wales, recently revealed a cancer diagnosis and a course of chemotherapy. In a recent video, Kate said that it has taken time “to explain everything to George, Charlotte, and Louis,” her children with her husband William, Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, “in a way that’s appropriate for them.” Learn the best approach to this difficult conversation in this interview with Wendy Baer, MD, director of psychiatric oncology at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University.This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Wendy Baer, MD It’s really important to pause and understand where you…

In 1991, I went to Teotihuacán, Mexico, to watch a total solar eclipse from the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. Alas, thick clouds moved in during the morning. At the time of totality, it just got really dark. I didn’t see a hole in the sky surrounded by a shimmering corona or any other eclipse phenomena: Baily’s beads, the diamond ring. I was crushed.This year, I’m planning to go to Plattsburgh, N.Y., near the Canadian border, to watch the April 8 eclipse from a city beach on the western shore of Lake Champlain. If the clouds come in…

To the Editor:Re “American Jews in the Age of Palestine,” by Peter Beinart (Opinion guest essay, March 24):There is a fundamental flaw in the article. Zionism does not require backing the Israeli government; it does assume backing for the State of Israel.The nation is and has been divided, and choosing to support the liberal elements of Israeli society, during a period when the ultra right controls the government, is not a rupture. It is a choice to support what many of us believe to be Jewish values, with the domination of the Palestinians being un-Jewish.Yes, there is a rupture between…

On July 9, 1998, a small house in Anata, a village northeast of Jerusalem, was destroyed for the first time. Home to the Shawamrehs, a Palestinian family of nine, the house was built four years earlier in a part of the West Bank over which Israel has military control. House demolitions occur routinely in this territory, where Palestinians like Arabiya and Salim Shawamreh are denied building permits on land that they have purchased and rightfully own.This house became a target for repeated demolitions because the family refused to leave. Each time Israeli authorities razed it, the family rebuilt it, alongside…

Does intermittent fasting raise your risk of death from heart disease? That’s what you might think from headlines about early research presented at a recent American Heart Association conference – drawing skepticism from experts and cautions from the researchers themselves.   Here’s what you should know.The American Heart Association issued a news release headlined: “8-hour time-restricted eating linked to a 91% higher risk of cardiovascular death.” Media outlets piled on with headlines saying some forms of intermittent fasting – a diet plan where food intake is limited on certain days or in certain hours of the day – “may pose risks to your heart”…

Mr. Trump’s audacious embrace of a criminal persona flies in the face of conventional wisdom. When Richard Nixon told the American public, “I am not a crook,” the underlying assumption was that voters would not want a crook in the White House. Mr. Trump is testing this assumption. It’s a canny piece of marketing. A violent mobster and a self-mythologizing millionaire, Capone sanitized his crimes by cultivating an aura of celebrity and bravery, grounded in distrust of the state and a narrative of unfair persecution. The public lapped it up. “Everybody sympathizes with him,” Vanity Fair noted of Capone in…

Since the early 2000s, most Americans have generally been dissatisfied with the economy and many are insecure about their place in it. The dissatisfaction peaked during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 but persists, even as the economy is growing and unemployment and inflation combined are roughly where they were during the relatively upbeat days of the Kennedy administration. This is a stubborn, long-term disgruntlement.Unlike short-term economic dissatisfaction, which lends itself to tinkering with interest rates and budgetary trade-offs, long-term dissatisfaction suggests a deeper, structural problem with the economy that requires more drastic measures. It is perhaps the signature…

I began my public health career more than 20 years ago, at a time when H.I.V. was ravaging many countries around the world. The U.S. government’s strategic response to attack this cruel disease abroad was PEPFAR, an American initiative that has saved more than 25 million lives and shaped my understanding of what muscular public health policy could accomplish.Today, as New York City’s health commissioner and a practicing doctor, I see a desperate need for similar focus and ambition here in the United States. The major health crisis we’re facing is not Covid or a single epidemic. It’s not cancer,…